Deutsche Grammophon has signed Joe Hisaishi

[Quppa 117]

Great album, if not novel. It makes sense for this to be the first Deutsche Grammophon release, but I hope we'll see some deeper cuts next time.

 

2 hours ago, p0llux said:

Just want to also mention it's a great month for Williams and Hisaishi fans with these new releases. One more release to go with Hisaishi's next Studio Ghibli collab with Hayao Miyazaki's "How Do You Live?" next month.

 

Fantastic - I'd missed the news that he'd been confirmed as composer. It looks like it was announced a couple of days ago and the album is scheduled for release on the 9th of August.

[blondheim 1,157]

I’m really surprised Ashitaka and San isn’t on here. It seems the only oversight if this album was to collect the “standards.”

[filmmusic 1,843]

8 hours ago, p0llux said:

One more release to go with Hisaishi's next Studio Ghibli collab with Hayao Miyazaki's "How Do You Live?" next month

Do we know that he has composed the score?

edit: Never mind! I saw a couple of posts above.

 

[j39m 75]

I haven't listened yet, but it is a jarringly pleasant surprise to see The Bach Choir credited for the singing on this album.

 

I'm also extremely pleased to finally see an album release of the vocal arrangement of Reprise. Yes!!!

[crocodile 8,020]

Interesting way to split the album between two discs. 🤣

 

 

Karol 

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

Amazon has posted mine, should arrive by the end of next week (seems slow).

[Jay 37,375]

12 hours ago, Quppa said:

I'd missed the news that he'd been confirmed as composer. It looks like it was announced a couple of days ago and the album is scheduled for release on the 9th of August.

 

Great news! 

 

 

3 hours ago, crocodile said:

Interesting way to split the album between two discs. 🤣

 

Woah, weird! 

[blondheim 1,157]

So 10 tracks or 29 tracks? Are the 10 tracks just the 29 smushed together?

[MaxTheHouseelf 324]

17 minutes ago, blondheim said:

Are the 10 tracks just the 29 smushed together?

27 yes. ("Merry-Go-Round of Life" and "ONE SUMMER'S DAY (THE NAME OF LIFE) (ENGLISH VERSION)" are on disc 2)

[crocodile 8,020]

CD album has 12 tracks altogether (10 + 2). I suppose they are only split into smaller movements on streaming services.

 

Karol

[Quppa 117]

19 hours ago, blondheim said:

I’m really surprised Ashitaka and San isn’t on here. It seems the only oversight if this album was to collect the “standards.”

 

I'd probably add 'Madness' from Porco Rosso to that list (although it's not like we're wanting for performances of it).

 

Incidentally, I wish 'The Wind(s) of Ages/Time' would get some love. Maybe we'll see a Porco Rosso symphonic suite one day. (In the meantime, Guillaume Masson's piano version is nice.)

[iamleyeti 114]

The digital version has way more tracks, it's quite strange…

[blondheim 1,157]

There are two themes from Porco Rosso that never get recorded that should.

[j39m 75]

I'm not even halfway through the album and I want to cheer for Grace Davidson. This is the first time I've heard a Mononoke that not only inflected the solos with character but also dialed it back nicely when the full choir was in play. Her performance of Mother Sea is also fabulously serene — it sounds effortless.

[Quppa 117]

 

Interesting comments starting at about 02:30 regarding Howl's Moving Castle - he wrote 3 waltzes and had Miyazaki choose his favourite. I wonder if one of the others forms part of Wizard's Waltz on the Image Symphonic Suite album (which notably doesn't contain Merry-Go-Round of Life, which I've always assumed meant it was written after pre-production).

[iamleyeti 114]

I shamefully never noticed that Merry-Go-Round of Life was not on the Image Album :'(

[crocodile 8,020]

I am enjoying this album quite a bit. It's very relaxing.

 

Karol

[GerateWohl 4,380]

I listened to the album on Spotify. Great bits here and there. But I must admit, I don't like most of the singing. And some pieces in the suites feel very rushed, especially in the suites. Like this wonderful piece from Howl's Moving Castle that only gets shortly quoted in the suite:

 

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

On 30/06/2023 at 9:42 PM, Jay said:

On 30/06/2023 at 6:44 PM, crocodile said:

Interesting way to split the album between two discs. 🤣

 

Woah, weird! 

 

 

 

…

 

Got this the other day and played it a few times since. Wonderful stuff, and mostly new to me, since I've only been familiar with Mononoke and Chihiro until that live concert a couple of months ago. The whole album is interestingly quite close and not so close to a Williams film music concert programme - close because it's entirely made up of formal concert arrangements for a standard symphonic ensemble, but not so close because while Williams mostly focuses on individual themes per piece (usually one per score, or multiple separate "movements" for a small suite), Hisaishi generally constructs his pieces from multiple score bits, giving a better approximation of the score as a whole, but at the same time necessarily giving some bits not as much room as they might deserve.

 

From what I understand, these all seem to be new arrangements. Even the few bits I'm reasonably familiar with are notably different - there's a lot of doubling of musical lines by the choir in Mononoke in places where I'm not used to hear it, even in the "symphonic suite" concert versions that do prominently include a choir elsewhere. I imagine that should make it less redundant for those who initially considered this yet another release of only those Hisaishi favourites that have already had many earlier releases. In any case, Hisaishi's stunning craftsmanship is apparent throughout - perhaps the strongest argument for his "the Japanese John Williams" moniker, because his handling of the orchestra, singers, and soloists is excellent throughout, despite his predisposition for stylistic crossovers.

 

There's more song-style singing than I expected (for this album), which takes some getting used to for me. But most of it is very fine, except that I'm not fond of his daughter's voice or singing style in Spirited Away. And I was hoping for the orchestra-only version of Totoro (which was the perfect encore for his Vienna concert), but of course we get the choir version of that as well. (Any pointers for a release of the orchestral version? Does this album maybe have it? The credits I can find online are horribly fuzzy, but at least the LSO is credited for *something*)

 

One observation that I find curious: Hisaishi is credited as "orchestra contractor", when the orchestra is simply credited as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Doesn't contracting in this context usually refer specifically to hiring the players to put the orchestra together? Wouldn't a pre-assembled ensemble just be hired as one entity, without actual contracting? Or does contracting in this case just mean that Hisaishi personally hired the orchesta?

[Quppa 117]

1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

And I was hoping for the orchestra-only version of Totoro (which was the perfect encore for his Vienna concert), but of course we get the choir version of that as well. (Any pointers for a release of the orchestral version? Does this album maybe have it? The credits I can find online are horribly fuzzy, but at least the LSO is credited for *something*)

 

The (choir-less) performance on the Dream Songs compilation comes from the (also excellent) 2010 Melodyphony album (recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra).

 

VGMdb is good for Hisaishi album credits.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

23 minutes ago, Quppa said:

The (choir-less) performance on the Dream Songs compilation comes from the (also excellent) 2010 Melodyphony album (recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra).

 

Thanks. That clearly seems to be the album to get, but sadly even that one seems hard to find (despite the LSO, it's apparently an Asian production?)

[j39m 75]

5 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

except that I'm not fond of his daughter's voice or singing style in Spirited Away

I was hesitant to say this but I guiltily confess that I greatly prefer the tone and pacing of Ayaka Hirahara from the Budokan concert. In Mai's hands, some phrases are curiously bent in unexpected ways (though it's not as though I speak Japanese, maybe there's a good reason for that) that catch me off-guard.

 

5 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

One observation that I find curious: Hisaishi is credited as "orchestra contractor", when the orchestra is simply credited as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Yeah, that is a bit strange. Might it just be a clerical error? Phil Cobb is likewise credited for a trumpet solo in "Merry-Go-Round," but there's barely any solo to speak of that I can hear.

[Quppa 117]

41 minutes ago, j39m said:

Phil Cobb is likewise credited for a trumpet solo in "Merry-Go-Round," but there's barely any solo to speak of that I can hear.

 

You're right - the trumpet solo is just in the Cave of Mind section. The entire track (track 1 on the digital release, disc 2 track 1 on the Limited Edition CDs) makes no sense - it's almost identical to the last 3 minutes of the 12:06 Howl's Moving Castle track (track 24 on the digital release, disc 1 track 8 on the physical release). The levels are slightly different but I'm 99% sure it's the same performance.

 

[j39m 75]

Geh. It probably is. It's a bit galling that they tried to pad that out as a bonus.

 

Then again, I'm quite ready to drop 9460 JPY (66 USD) on Joe's Brahms cycle later this month, so it's clear that I'm a real chump with my money.

[Marian Schedenig 8,211]

5 hours ago, j39m said:

Then again, I'm quite ready to drop 9460 JPY (66 USD) on Joe's Brahms cycle later this month, so it's clear that I'm a real chump with my money.

 

Brahms cycle… where does he find the time? In a way, "the Japanese Jerry Goldsmith" might be a more apt nickname. It seems that every time he performs his film music in concert, he makes an entirely new suite with entirely new arrangements.

[Quppa 117]

A Symphonic Celebration is #1 on the Billboard Classical and Classical Crossover charts for the week of July 15.

 

Japanese report: https://tower.jp/article/news/2023/07/14/tg001 (with a note at the bottom that it's confirmed Hisaishi had music duties for How Do You Live?, which is out today).

[Quppa 117]

On 07/07/2023 at 3:12 PM, Quppa said:

 

You're right - the trumpet solo is just in the Cave of Mind section. The entire track (track 1 on the digital release, disc 2 track 1 on the Limited Edition CDs) makes no sense - it's almost identical to the last 3 minutes of the 12:06 Howl's Moving Castle track (track 24 on the digital release, disc 1 track 8 on the physical release). The levels are slightly different but I'm 99% sure it's the same performance.

 

I confirmed with DG that it's the same performance and that the trumpet solo credit is a misprint:

 

Quote

"Merry-Go-Round of Life” is cut out from the last 3 minutes of track 8 on CD 1 ("Howl’s Moving Castle").  It is the same performance.
"Merry-Go-Round of Life” was mixed in such a way that it can stand as one song.
On the other hand, track 8 on CD 1 ("Howl’s Moving Castle") was mixed by the consideration the balance of a total song ("Howl’s Moving Castle"). This is why the levels are slightly different between "Merry-Go-Round of Life” and "Howl’s Moving Castle".
 
Regarding “Phil Cobb”, it is a misprint.

 

[Jay 37,375]

Wow!  Direct, helpful, clear, concrete information from a music label.  Sad that this is the exception and not the rule these days!

[p0llux 400]

I know Hisaishi's scores for the Ni no Kuni games weren't by Miyazaki, but the art was by Studio Ghibli and it would've been amazing to have those scores included here. They would've fit right in.

[Quppa 117]

On 30/06/2023 at 2:19 PM, p0llux said:

Most of the performances here by the RPO are pretty good. Track 1 is the only one I'd consider an upgrade over the NJPWDO Hisaishi typically works with.

 

I'm very happy with the performances overall, but does 5:45 to 5:50 in Symphonic Variation "Merry-Go-Round + Cave of Mind" (from 'Howl’s Moving Castle') sound off to anyone else? The same brass part in Sulliman's Magic Square ~ Return to the Castle (~2:40) on the original soundtrack and Symphonic Variation "Merry-Go-Round" on Works III (~8:58) sounds much better. The rest of the track sounds fine.

[p0llux 400]

@Quppayea, the french horns there weren't together. Not as tight as the other performances unfortunately.

[Brónach 1,302]

On 07/07/2023 at 12:58 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

 

Brahms cycle… where does he find the time? In a way, "the Japanese Jerry Goldsmith" might be a more apt nickname. It seems that every time he performs his film music in concert, he makes an entirely new suite with entirely new arrangements.

 

nooooooooooooo

[j39m 75]

On 27/07/2023 at 4:12 PM, Quppa said:

5:45 to 5:50 in Symphonic Variation "Merry-Go-Round + Cave of Mind" (from 'Howl’s Moving Castle') sound off to anyone else?

 

Oh, nuts. Hadn't noticed until you pointed it out.

 

I console myself by thinking this is actually a rare case where I am probably happy to refer back to the recording at the Budokan — the attacks feel sharper, which is great in my book.

[JTN 2,048]

Love this release, although the short Disc 2 is a little ridiculous tbh. Nevertheless, an excellent release overall, well done, DG, RPO and of course, Maestro Hisaishi. 

[Jay 37,375]

I can't believe I still haven't had time to listen to this.  Can't wait to finally do so when the time is right.

[Pawel P. 738]

Absolutely brilliant release!

 

I have some Hisaishi's albums in my collection, over 30, but if I had to recommend just one, I might choose this one.